BS5 - Spirited Away

[Thomas Mahon]

Starting out comps:



Then I hated those up top, so I decided to start with something fresh:

after a long debate with myself and getting others opinions:

a quick colour wash and started to flesh stuff out

I'm struggling with the piece so far, feedback would be great, the colours are muddy and I'm going to try and fix them before I continue rendering

studies:
woman for yubabba


(for the above mask, I was looking at noh faces design but decided not to go with this kind of mask, too scary)

going to do more studies as i render out and fix the colours

let me know what you think!

[joerdenleigh]

I like # 2 and 3 , but maybe make her and the spirit bigger? i dunno hehe just feel like i keep looking at the dragon and old woman, lookin good so far man!

[Thomas Mahon]

changed some colours, looked too green. now its red, great

[RachelCham]

Nice work! You should have some cooler colours lighting up the front if you're going to have reds coming from the sky at the back, like what you've done with Haku's face . Also your shadows are very red at the moment, if you darken them back to being more saturated/black then it might fix it.

[Thomas Mahon]

decided to go in this direction after a couple of crits I got, I'm actually starting to like it now, haha

[Thomas Mahon]

study for the boiler man

[Thomas Mahon]

This is where i'm at at the moment.

Probably going to refine some stuff and hand this in. I would probably consider this my first full illustration, I like it, but I have a long way to go in terms of skill.

[7brushes]

I like it ! but I still believe you had better compositions in the first sketches you posted , anyways you are doing an excellent work on a complex image.

critics:
the image get heavier in value on the top part and that affects a bit the depth giving a flat image feeling despite all the light rim lights contrasts, a good way of solving this could be flipping the dark values on the lower area and making it progressively light towards the top of the canvas , that will also make the tittle pop a little better.

I hope it helps somehow,good luck! the last day is here!

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I forgot to mention , that you should have some technique to check the values, I dont know if you are doing that but ones of the tricks is :

create a layer on top and fill with pure white or pure black , change the mode of the layer to 'color' mode. switch on and off the layer to see the values (how heavy or light the areas are , to check shading reads ,etc)